Adele’s Album Will Be Big. But Will It Be Streaming?

“If Adele decides to not have her music on streaming for a certain period of time, that is going to send a strong signal to other artists,” said Casey Rae, chief executive of the Future of Music Coalition, an artists’ advocacy group. “In reality, not all artists are able to make those same choices.”

With her last album, “21,” released in early 2011, Adele scored the kind of blockbuster success that the industry had all but written off as extinct. It sold about 30 million copies around the world, making it one of the most popular releases in decades; in the United States, a majority of its 11 million sales were on CD.